The present invention relates to the use of astaxanthin-containing plants or parts of plants of the genus Tagetes or astaxanthin-containing extracts of astaxanthin-containing plants or parts of plants of the genus Tagetes for oral administration to animals, methods for producing animal feed preparations, the animal feed preparations themselves, a method for pigmenting animals or animal products, and also a method for producing pigmented animals and animal products.
On account of its coloring properties astaxanthin is used as pigment in animal nutrition, in particular in trout, salmon and shrimp breeding.
Astaxanthin is currently chiefly produced by chemical synthesis methods. Natural astaxanthin is currently produced in biotechnological methods in small amounts by culturing algae, for example Haematococcus pluvialis, or by fermentation of genetically optimized microorganisms and subsequent isolation.
Synthetic astaxanthin or natural astaxanthin produced by isolation is chemically and/or physically stabilized by special formulation techniques for increasing storage life and is prepared for the respective use in accordance with the desired application sectors and bioavailabilities.
WO 9201754 describes an astaxanthin-containing wild type plant of the species Adonis aestivalis. In addition, the document discloses the use of the astaxanthin-containing petals of Adonis aestivalis and also extracts thereof as fish food, or as additive in fish food for pigmenting fish.
The use of Adonis aestivalis as a plant source of astaxanthin for pigmenting fish in the prior art, however, has the disadvantage that the yield of astaxanthin-containing biomass and thus of astaxanthin-containing plant material per unit of culture area is very low, and thus a satisfactory amount of astaxanthin-containing plant material can only be obtained by cost-intensive culture of large areas. This leads to high costs in the production of corresponding pigments.